Monthly Archives: May 2012

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this topic for the last few days, weeks, months, years. I guess it’s been on my mind since I got married, or shortly afterwards. As stated in my first post, my marriage started off a little rocky, and physical intimacy was one of the large points of contention between us. My wife had a very low sex drive due to birth-control pills, and I wasn’t helping anything with my emotional walls I had built up as a teenager.

Things are much improved these days, but pregnancy, periods, and other life events of course occasionally interrupt our sex life.

Side effects of no sex

During these times, I’m afraid I’m not very patient. At around day 3 or 4, I start getting a little antsy and frustrated. This leads to my temper shortening. I’m harder on the kids, and I’m less emotionally supportive of my wife. I’m not proud of this. I fight it, but I haven’t been very successful so far.

My wife has similar symptoms. Now, whether they are internally generated like mine, or merely a response to my bearish behaviour, I can’t say. But it is the reality. Continue reading →

If your wife is like mine in this regard, and from my conversations with other men, many are, your wife does not like to tell you what she wants from you. Generally she can’t tell you what she wants at all. Your life is full of questions like

“What do you want for dinner?”

or

“What do you want to do today/tonight/tomorrow?”

or if you’re doing well

“What do you want to do to me?” while you’re in bed.

These sort of questions set an internal conflict off in our bodies.

We know what we want, most of the time.

We don’t what she wants, and we’ve been trained to be submissive to women. Perhaps not overtly, but we’re taught to be the “Nice Guy” and take her needs into consideration, and above our own.

So, we get stuck and say “I don’t know”. Because we don’t know if you’re asking what we really want, or if you’re asking what we think you want us to want.

We recently welcomed our fourth child into our family and I thought I’d write a bit to reflect what’s going on on the sexual side of things in terms of pregnancy and after the birth from the male perspective.

Now, I know this may rub wrong with the women who read this, because pregnancy is typically all about the women. I can’t speak for that side, so I’m going to post on behalf of the men, especially myself. I want to let people know about the struggles involved for the husband, because we get overlooked a lot during this time, and frankly, it’s dangerous.

Now, this is a generalization based on my experiences, there will be exceptions, but I think what’s happening in our household is fairly normal.

Pregnancy

So, if you are planning to get pregnant, things start of great! Your wife wants sex all the time (or at least while she’s fertile), she seems always in the mood and ready at the drop of a hat. Now, here’s where the first conflict emerges: Continue reading →